Hello Readers,
Sorry for the week long hiatus, but once I describe the week I've had I think you'll understand. I don't know how exactly to organize the recent "events", so here's a few key points
- My eye is fucked
Yes, I know I write a lot about this, but of course it's still an unresolved problem. I told you how my retina has again detached and then how it reattached. Due to this my surgery was cancelled, but I was told to keep it easy and wait a week to check in on it.
So I waited.
Bright and early Tuesday morning I went back to the eye institute. A resident did my initial evaluation, and quickly I realized something was up. Here were the clues:
A) The once friendly resident stopped speaking to me
B) She took a long time to evaluate my eyes
C) She went and got other residents so they could have a look.
Of course, none of the other residents offered insight. They just wanted to see a rare, complicated and exciting case. Aren't I special?
Anyways, my doctor eventually comes in and tells me that my retina has a "fold" , caused again by fluid accumulation and release. Basically, fluid would accumulate (causing my retina to detach) and make the retina stretch, then go away, creating the fold. Anywho, what it means is that my retina needs more support than it's currently getting. The procedure to correct this is relatively simple and not nearly as serious as my last surgery - basically they place a bubble of silicone oil in the eye to support the retina.
Easy! Done! Fixed!
But
You knew there was a "but" didn't you?
The silicone oil can cause my body to reject my transplanted cornea and can clog the shunts in my eyes. These complications can be corrected, but it would entail more surgeries....more painful, slow healing surgeries.
So I am questioning whether or not I want to go through with this. My eye barely even responds to light, and it is unlikely to regain any sort of usable vision. I am starting to feel like it's come to a point where you have to ask if it's worth it.
I told my mum this and it resulted in an argument. She's convinced that if I let it deteriorate that I will get sympathetic opthalmia (autoimmune disease where your body attacks the "good" eye when the other eye has experienced trauma) and go completely blind. This is unimaginably rare, and I have no evidence that I am more at risk.
Still, my mum accused me of being impatient and immature for questioning this.
Argghh, I was supposed to make this whole thing point form! I'll try again
- The administrators who promised me certain accommodations earlier this year are not doing what they said they would. I was going to get the "D-" removed from my transcripts (for a course I was unable to complete due to hospitalization). It is still there, and I lost my scholarship. Also, it is time to choose courses and I don't know what I am supposed to do in regards to that.
- goddamn ED, as usual
- Had a panic attack after class last night. I had to sit down in the hall to collect myself. My prof came out of the room, saw me and asked "Are you ok Alex? Why are you sitting by the garbage? I responded (very awkwardly) "uhhh, yeah....just arguing with someone.....on my cell phone..." then I walked away. Humiliation? Check. My prof probably now thinks that I plan to do a surprise ambush attack outside of the classroom.
- Life in general.
- Things that I don't even feel comfortable blogging about.
Anyways, that is how things are going. I think I expressed my emotions along with all the "points", so I won't be redundant.
Ok, film analysis. For starters,my class was assigned a film analysis on a move involving drugs. We were given a list to choose from, and I chose requiem for a dream. Definitely one of the more depressing choices (I could have done Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle), but the way addiction is portrayed resonates so strongly that I had to choose it.
First of all, does everyone know what a requiem is? It's a mass/ceremony held for somebody who has died. Keep the title in mind as I explain.
Here's the plot (thanks wikipedia!)
Plot
The film charts three seasons in the lives of Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and Harry’s friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans). Each character is ultimately destroyed by addiction and self-delusion.
The story begins in summer. Sara Goldfarb, an elderly widow living alone in her Brighton Beach apartment, spends her time watching infomercials on television. After a phone call announces that she will be invited to be a participant on a game show, she becomes obsessed with matching her appearance to a photograph from Harry's graduation, her proudest moment. In order to fit into her old red dress, the favorite of her deceased husband, she begins taking a regimen of prescription weight-loss amphetamine pills throughout the day and asedative at night. The pills alter her behavior, but she passionately insists that the chance to be on television has given her a reason to live. However, her invitation does not arrive over the fall, and she begins to up her dosage, causing nightmarish hallucinations, where she is the principal subject of the game show.
Her son Harry is a heroin addict. Together with fellow addicts — his friend Tyrone and his girlfriend Marion — he enters the drug trade in an attempt to realize their dreams. With the money they make over the summer, Harry and Marion hope to open a fashion store for Marion's designs, while Tyrone dreams of escaping the street and making his mother proud. However, at the beginning of fall, Tyrone is caught in the middle of a drug gang assassination, and Harry uses the majority of the money they've earned to bail him out of jail. Meanwhile, because of the arrests and shootings of dealers, it becomes very hard to obtain any drugs, throwing Harry, Tyrone, and Marion into a state of deprivation. Growing more desperate, Harry convinces Marion to get money from her psychiatrist by having sex with him in exchange for money, causing a rift in the relationship. Marion begins prostituting herself and Harry's arm is now severely infected from unsanitary injection techniques.
Sara's sanity unravels after she visits the TV studio and she is put in a mental institution, where she undergoes electroconvulsive therapy. Harry and Tyrone travel to Florida, where they believe they can start over, but Harry's deteriorating condition forces them to visit a hospital in South Carolina, where they are arrested for skipping bail. Harry is taken to a prison hospital due to his arm, which is amputated. Tyrone must deal with racist prison guards, hard labor, and drug withdrawal alone. Harry has a recurring dream of Marion waiting for him at the pier at Coney Island, but awakens and realizes that he is alone, missing an arm, and in jail. Marion meets with a pimp, with whom she has sex in exchange for drugs, and who puts her in sex shows to pay off the debt.
Lost in misery, each character curls into a fetal position. In Sara's dream, she wins the game show's grand prize and meets Harry there. In her fantasy, Harry is a successful businessman and engaged to Marion. Mother and son hug and say how much they love one another through the cheers of the crowd and the glowing stage lights.
Ok, we all sort of get the point? No? Yes? Oh well.
An eating disorder shares a lot of similarities to addiction. Self mutilation does to a certain extent, but not as much as an ED.
You are at a place in time where you feel disconnected- like you don't belong. You crave acceptance, safety, support....but you cannot get it.
You search for what is keeping you isolated, and you come to the conclusion that the problem comes from within. Something about you needs to change.
So you go on a quest to loose weight. You do research and make a plan. You start the plan.
The sight of numbers going down on the scale and the feel of your clothes hanging off you gives you a momentary high. You start getting compliments, which also gives you a high and increases your determination to continue with your behaviours.
You begin to live for these moments, believing that if you continue on, someday you will be accepted, loved, admired.....happy.
This is a delusion, as those feelings cannot be achieved by disordered eating behaviours. You are like a donkey pulling a cart, and the ED is dangling a carrot in front of you. You get the occasional nibble, but it is almost always just out of reach.
The compliments turn into concern, but in your mind they are the same thing. Your world becomes narrow, following the dream that you were promised.
In the end you become completely powerless, curled up in the fetal position like the addicts portrayed in this film. You wonder how you ever got to this place.
I've had too many of those moments.
Being admitted to a psych ward a day after my thirteenth birthday
and then again a month later
Having friends stage a quasi "intervention" cause I've stopped eating and am scaring the shit out of them
Being examined by a doctor at the eating disorder clinic, having her note my low blood counts, lowered heart rate, and small fur coat of lanugo
Being told I might go into heart failure, kidney failure (as if I didn't feel enough like a failure) and am just below the line where hospitalization is necessary
Having my last day of high school happen months before everyone else, as I are being sent to treatment
Getting kicked out of treatment for not gaining a set amount of pounds in a set amount of time
Psych ward again, years after I swore I was "over" all my issues
Trying to end my life....obviously not succeeding
Ok, you guys get the picture.
However, unlike the people in the film, my story doesn't end there. I am know searching for what I dream of but cannot take the path I've come to know.
This is getting to be so erratic and confusing, so I 'll stop writing here. All I can say is that I'm trying to find my way.
Peace, Love and Veggies,
Alex
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